So the Hauhau scored once more; but a month later the scales dropped again, and Titokowaru, who was really a formidable leader, was beaten at Otauto and forced to ignominious flight. Another blow or two completely smashed this powerful chief and bold warrior, and then the pendulum of war swung sullenly back to the east, where Te Kooti had again shown his teeth and, wolf-like, worried his own kind as well as those of another colour.
It was pleasant for the colonists in all this turmoil of war to learn that their industrial progress and rise into a position of political and social importance had not gone unmarked, and that their Queen was now to recognise their standing by sending her son to visit them. Great was the enthusiasm and fervid the welcome which the Flying Squadron received on the 12th of April as the Galatea with Commodore H.R.H. Prince Alfred of Edinburgh on board swept into Port Nicholson and boomed an answer to the thundering salute from the shore. Wherever the Duke appeared throughout the Australasian colonies he was well received; but nowhere with greater heartiness than in New Zealand. For the colonists there knew that they owed a debt of gratitude to the mother country—which to many of them was still "home"—and Britain's Queen was as loyally regarded as in her own sea-girt islands in the North.
As if the visit of Queen Victoria's son brought good augury of peace, Titokowaru was no more heard of, and Te Kooti gradually declined in power, until, harried on every side, he fled at last into the country of the Uriwera, the wildest and most savage tribe in New Zealand. Their country—in the mountainous peninsula between the Bay of Plenty and Poverty Bay—was as wild and savage as themselves, and afforded an almost inaccessible retreat to the Hauhau fugitives. But men like Whitmore and McDonnell, not to speak of Kepa Te Rangihiwinui and Ropata Wahawaha, were not to be dismayed by savagery, animate or inanimate, and Te Kooti was chased from point to point until even his bold spirit began to quail, and he realised at last how terrible was the just anger of the Pakeha, slow to kindle, but inextinguishable by aught but the full satisfaction of righteous vengeance.
Te Kooti's day was not quite done. He was not rash, but by no means a coward, never hesitating to expose his person when necessary; yet he was seldom wounded, while his hairbreadth escapes from capture and from death itself seemed to justify the growl of his pursuers that "the devil took good care of his own."
On one occasion when his pa had been stormed and he was within an ace of being taken, he apparently fell over a cliff, and the men who were chasing him hurried themselves no further. But, when they reached the edge of the precipice and peered over, instead of a mangled body, they saw a rope of flax, down which the wily Hauhau had slid into safety.
On another occasion, under pretence of freeing a number of prisoners, he ordered them all to be disarmed, an order which every one recognised as preliminary to a general massacre—as it was. One bold fellow, standing almost within touch of the Hauhau leader, cried out, "This is to be done so that we may be the more easily killed. If I am to die, so shall you," and fired point-blank at his captor. As the hammer fell, a Hauhau struck up the muzzle of the gun; but if the Maori—whose fate was sealed in any case—had not drawn attention to his action by making a speech, he would have had Te Kooti's company on the road to Reinga, and the world would have been the sooner rid of a murderous ruffian.
Strong in his luck, Te Kooti skirmished and fought his way out of the Uriwera country and marched across to Taupo, where he compelled the allegiance of Te Heu Heu, chief of the "Boiling Water" tribes. His great ambition was to capture to his side the powerful chiefs of Whanganui and Waikato, but his arrogance and overweening belief in his own superiority offended each in turn. Moreover, he alienated Topia Turoa, the great Whanganui chief by the causeless murder of a blood relation of the latter, which so angered Topia that he not only took the field against Te Kooti, but did him an even worse turn by using his influence with the Waikato against him.
The Waikato also had personal reasons for allowing Te Kooti to go to ruin unaccompanied by them. They had expressed themselves willing to receive a visit from him, but when he arrived with three hundred picked men, he gave himself such insufferable airs that many were disgusted, and the Waikato leaders made no haste to pay their respects until urged to do so by the great fighter, Rewi of the Ngati-Maniapoto.
They came at last, five hundred strong, bearing presents, to the place where Te Kooti and his three hundred champions awaited them. Then, either to show that he was prepared for treachery, or wishful to test their courage, or merely in an antic spirit, the Hauhau ordered his following to fire a volley with ball cartridge low over the heads of the Waikato.